Amherst College - Ben & Jerry's Homemadehttps://www.amherst.edu/taxonomy/term/12709
enNo More Knocking Headshttps://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/magazine/issues/2011fall/wherearetheynow/lacy/node/363683
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span class="fine-print">By Katherine Jamieson</span></p>
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<div class="mediainline"><span class="inline"><img src="/media/view/361259/original/147920560.jpg" alt="147920560" title="147920560" class="image original" height="231" width="154"></span></div>
<div class="mediainline" style="text-align:center;"><span class="fine-print">Chuck Lacy ’80</span></div>
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</tr></tbody></table><p><span class="drop-cap2">C</span>huck Lacy describes his career as a series of 90-degree turns. As an executive at Ben &amp; Jerry’s ice cream, he oversaw a tenfold increase in sales and the creation of 700 new jobs in rural Vermont. As a producer of the Tribeca Film Festival winner <em>The War Tapes</em>, he and his crew edited stories from footage sent in by soldiers in Iraq. These days, as an independent cattle farmer, “leverage is something I do with a pipe.” </p>
<p>Working at Ben &amp; Jerry’s was “hilarious and grueling,” says Lacy, who was profiled in <em>Amherst</em> when he became the firm’s president and COO in 1990. “We were influential in the business community because we showed that you didn’t have to be straightlaced.” During his tenure, the company famous for Cherry Garcia and social liberalism initiated “ice cream diplomacy,” opening a café-factory in Russia in 1992.</p>
<p>By 1994, Ben &amp; Jerry’s had plans to expand to Europe and Asia, but an expert evaluating the company’s environmental impact asked, as Lacy remembers it, “What are you guys doing, making ice cream and shipping it to England and Japan?” To Lacy, continued financial growth—a must for a publicly traded firm—seemed impossible without geographic growth. “I didn’t see a way out of that problem.”</p>
<p>This crossroads, combined with a general sense of exhaustion, prompted Lacy to resign in 1995, when the firm hired Robert Holland to replace Ben Cohen as CEO and Lacy as president. “I stayed around for a year afterwards, helping the transition,” Lacy says. In 2000 Ben &amp; Jerry’s became a division of the multinational Unilever.</p>
<p>“Ben &amp; Jerry’s was an extraordinary experience,” Lacy says. “I knew, if I tried to duplicate that or exceed it, I would be really frustrated and have to leave Vermont. I realized that I’d be happiest if I evaluated my success on a totally different measuring stick.” He took classes toward a creative writing degree at Dartmouth and started businesses with each of his three children. When his youngest became interested in cattle farming, Lacy saw an opportunity to revive the beef industry in New England with grass-fed, heritage breeds. Over the past decade, he’s converted pastures from three old dairy farms for his own herd of cattle and started a grass-fed-beef distribution business. He’s also a guest lecturer at MIT, where he teaches about socially responsible businesses.</p>
<p>Running his own farm has proved more gratifying to Lacy than “knocking heads at the policy level,” he says. “These days I’d rather invest my time in things I run myself, which involve little compromise with nonbelievers.” He laughs, “I’m a crotchety old curmudgeon.”</p>
<p><span class="fine-print">Photo by Rob Mattson</span></p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/10901">Farm</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/12709">Ben &amp; Jerry&#039;s Homemade</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/16505">Where Are They Now</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/16513">Chuck Lacy</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/16514">Lacy</a></div></div></div><ul class="links inline"><li class="sharethis first last"><a href="/sharethis-ajax/363683" class="mm-sharethis">Share</a></li>
</ul>Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:37:55 +0000kdduke363683 at https://www.amherst.eduhttps://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/magazine/issues/2011fall/wherearetheynow/lacy/node/363683#commentsJerry Greenfield, Co-Founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, to Speak at Amherst College March 25https://www.amherst.edu/news/news_releases/2010/03/node/184320
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span class="fine-print">March 8, 2010</span> </p><p>AMHERST, Mass.—On Thursday, March 25, at 8 p.m. in the Freidmann Room of Amherst College’s KeefeCampusCenter, Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben &amp; Jerry’s Ice Cream, will deliver a talk titled “How Ice Cream Changed the World.”<!--break--> The event, which is sponsored by the Schwemm Fund, is free and open to the public.</p> <p>Greenfield and his longtime friend and business partner Ben Cohen are the men behind one of the most renowned success stories in American business: Ben &amp; Jerry’s Homemade, Inc. A co-founder of the company, Greenfield helped build what was once a storefront venture into a $300 million ice cream empire by making social responsibility and creative management strengths instead of weaknesses.</p> <p>Greenfield was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., four days before his future business partner Cohen, whom he later met in junior high school. During his undergraduate years at OberlinCollege, Greenfield got his first taste of the ice cream industry when he took a job as a scooper in the college cafeteria. Upon graduating, he worked as a lab technician in New York and lived with Cohen. In 1977, the two friends decided to fulfill a dream they both shared of running a food business together. They eventually settled on ice cream, and, after a bit of research (and a $5 PennState correspondence course in ice cream-making), opened Ben &amp; Jerry’s Homemade ice cream parlor in Burlington, Vt., in May 1978.</p> <p>Greenfield and Cohen soon became known throughout Vermont for their rich, unusual flavors and community-oriented approach to business. In the early days of their business, Greenfield made all the ice cream, but as the company expanded into new markets, he soon found himself handling everything from distribution to orientation to employee motivation.</p> <p>Greenfield and Cohen have since been recognized for fostering their company’s commitment to social responsibility by the Council on Economic Priorities (which honored them with the Corporate Giving Award in 1988 for donating 7.5 percent of their pre-tax profits to nonprofit organizations through the Ben &amp; Jerry’s Foundation) and by the U.S. Small Business Administration (which named them U.S. Small Business Persons of the Year in 1988 in a White House ceremony hosted by President Reagan). Greenfield also authored a book, <i>Dip: Lead with Your Values and Make Money, Too</i> (co-authored with Cohen), which has been described as a nuts-and-bolts guidebook to the promises and pitfalls of “values-led” business and an inspiring wake-up call about the growing international influence of the “socially conscious” or “mission-driven” corporation.</p> <p align="center">###</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2968">schwemm fund</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/12708">Jerry Greenfield</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/12709">Ben &amp; Jerry&#039;s Homemade</a></div></div></div><ul class="links inline"><li class="sharethis first last"><a href="/sharethis-ajax/184320" class="mm-sharethis">Share</a></li>
</ul>Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:36:07 +0000channa184320 at https://www.amherst.edu